Yes lighting is a significant factor. If an object appears too bright, really only four things are possible:
- It is reflecting too much diffuse light
- It is reflecting too much specular light
- There is too much light in the scene
- The object is self-emissive
But if that isn’t good enough - There are no PBR police. If you need to go out of range to achieve a desired result - then do it. The flaw with obsessing over “PBR range” is that real time models such as this are not actually perfectly physically accurate anyway. There is little point banging your head against a wall because you need something to be a bit darker. There is a reason it is called 3D Art. Sometimes art direction (ie “Make this darker”) is more important that self imposed rules.